Photo by Amy Herzog/New Jersey Herald — Hunter Klingener, of the Kittatinny Barracudas, is on his way to a meet record in the 11-12 boys 50-meter breaststroke at Saturday’s Wallkill Valley Swim Conference Championships.

However there is one thing he likes more than that: seeing them and the rest of the teams from the Wallkill Valley Swim Conference gather for their annual championship meet.

Unfortunately, the 11 summer swimming squads swam for eight hours at Lake Tranquility Saturday before the 17th installment of the championship meet was suspended with 13 events left due to multiple thunderstorms.

The meet resumes today at 10 a.m., with warm-up sessions for the remaining events beginning at 9 a.m.

"It's disappointing on a bunch of different levels," Soutter said of the meet being suspended. "You get all the kids together and now there's the repercussions of some families that can't make it. But, it's Mother Nature. You just have to roll with the punches."

The meet got through 45 of the 58 scheduled events, 38 of which took place Saturday from 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. But at 1:50 p.m., after seven events raced, a thunderstorm hovering by the far side of the lake boomed, causing the officials to stop the meet.

Then after it rained heavily for about an hour and the thunder kept booming until 3:10 p.m., the officials announced that the meet would resume at 3:40. However, the meet could only get in one more event — the 7-8-year-old boys 25-meter backstroke — before another thunderstorm near the area stopped it again.

After this delay, the officials summoned Soutter, who is also the WVSC president, and meet directors Chelsea Costaney and Lauren Wittig to discuss about a possible postponement, which they made official at 4 p.m. The meet has the following 25-meter events still to complete: the 7-8 girls backstroke, the 9-10 boys and girls backstrokes, the 7-8 boys and girls breaststrokes, the 9-10 boys and girls breaststrokes, the 6 & Under boys and girls freestyles, the 7-8 boys and girls frees and the 9-10 boys and girls frees.

"We talked about it and worked on it together," Soutter said.

"But the deciding factor was that the National Weather Service has a thunder storm warning effective until 10 o'clock tonight. So, the officials were a little uneasy about swimming kids in a thunderstorm, especially continuing thunder, and I kind of have to agree with him."

Costaney also agreed, but was really bummed the meet had to be suspended considering all the effort her Lake Tranquility club put in to setting it up.

"We spent weeks and weeks putting it together," said Costaney, who is also the head coach of Lake Tranquility. "So, it is really hard to push it back and reorganize everything. It's not how we planned it to go that's for sure."

Although the meet is put on hold, the Barracudas look like they are on their way to a sixth straight team championship after amassing 1,015 points. Newton stands in second with 682 points, Lake Tranquility is in third at 640, Lake Tamarack is in fourth at 455.5 and Sussex Wantage is in fifth at 430, respectively.

The Barracudas were led by 12-year-old Hunter Klingener and 16-year-old Monica Abdul-Chani, who each won two gold medals.

Klingener was the only swimmer from his age group to pick up two first-place finishes, winning the 50-meter breast and the 100 free in 36.03 and 1:04.81, respectively. His time in the breast set a new meet record, surpassing Dan Olsen's 1992 mark of 40.69.

As for Abdul-Chani, she won the 50 and 100 frees in 31.62 and 1:11.56, respectively, to make her the only girl from her age group to nab two victories. Abdul-Chani, a rising Pope John senior, also helped the Barracudas place second in the 9-18 200 medley relay in 2:43.45.

There were also few individual standouts, including Sussex Wantage's Emily Haudek, who collected a meet-high three gold medals. Haudek won the 13-14 50 fly and back while also helping the Porpoises' relay take first.

Her best performance was in the fly, finishing in 31.22 to take down Niki Westra's 1995 record of 32.36.

"It's a great accomplishment," said Haudek, who is heading into her freshman year at High Point. "I just try my hardest every time."

Other record-breakers from the day included Sussex Wantage's Allie VanGlahn and Lake Tranquility's Matthew Freund.

VanGlahn won the 15-18 100 breast in 1:23.88, surpassing the time of 1:33.02 set by Rebecca Scheyer back in 2007. Freund took first in the 7-8 fly in 19.22 to beat Andrew Martinez's 2007 mark of 27.00.